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Editorial: Acknowledge deadly risks in prep football

Enquirer editorial board
Published 6:11 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2015

Football has by far the highest concussion rate of all youth and high school sports. Of note, high school football players are nearly twice as likely to get concussions as college football players, according to Institute of Medicine research. Moreover, according to the Brain Injury Research Institute, in any given season, 20% of high school football players sustain brain injuries.(Photo: Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)

People want to hear that their kids will be safe playing football. It’s not a guarantee that anybody can or should make, but those who love the game are taking significant steps to reassure parents.

The Michigan High School Athletic Association may, in fact, be leading the nation in efforts to answer growing concerns about the risks of brain injuries in youth sports — football, in particular.

This fall, the MHSAA is launching a pilot with 70 high schools — Maple Valley is among them — with two sideline diagnostic tools designed to identify concussions and ensure injured athletes don’t return to play prematurely.

The tests — the King-Devick Test and XLNTbrain Sport — will involve some 10,000 student-athletes this school year, with each school having committed to involving two sports for each gender in each season.

The association also is requiring schools to keep records of “all concussion events, from detection to an athlete’s return to play,” for all athletes grades 7 through 12, and is providing insurance that would cover families’ deductibles and co-pays resulting from concussions sustained during practices or games.

These moves augment policies adopted in March 2014 that introduced ramped-up requirements in the first week of practices and set limits on full-contact practices throughout the seasons.

The MHSAA and pilot schools deserve credit for the initiatives — MHSAA says it is the first state association in the nation to offer a sideline concussion-testing program — and for their efforts to educate coaches, players and their families on the risks associated with head injuries.

Absent in those efforts, however, is an acknowledgment of mounting evidence that even rigorous sideline detection programs and better protective equipment may prove inadequate at protecting kids.

Nationwide, parents and players are increasingly aware of research that suggests that the risks inherent in football are unacceptable for younger players. In 2014, three teenagers in the space of four days were killed by football-related injuries. In 2013, eight young men died playing high school football.

The total number of deaths from for all other high school sports in 2013? Zero.

Mounting evidence suggests that less-serious collisions — so-called sub-concussive events — may be nearly as dangerous. In a 2010 study, Purdue University researchers compared changes in the brains of high school players who had suffered concussions with the brains of those who were concussion-free. They found brain tissue damage in both — meaning that brain injuries are occurring without concussions and without players, coaches or parents being aware of it.

Underlying the MHSAA efforts is the sentiment that football is unfairly under attack, that proper techniques and procedures will make the game safe.

It’s understandable. Football is so embedded in our traditions that resistance to change is difficult to overcome. Yet even among the professional ranks, attitudes are changing, and there’s a small but persuasive chorus of voices questioning whether high school football should even exist.

For now, athletes and their families can only decide for themselves whether the risks of playing the sport is worth the rewards. And while we applaud the MHSAA efforts to date, the association and its coaches should be willing to acknowledge that the question of whether prep football is or ever can be safe is far from settled.

It is, after all, only a game. It’s no great loss if participation in football programs wanes or vanishes, but the continued loss of life in high school football is intolerable.